Writing an Ecological Research Proposal

This is a writing assignment that is broken up into steps that emulate the process of developing a novel scientific question and creating a research proposal to answer the question. The assignment is loosely based on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program proposal and consists of all of the same pieces except for Broader Impacts. This assignment was developed for a course in plant ecology, but is applicable to many of the biological and environmental science fields. First, students are encouraged to explore the primary literature and the natural world around them to develop a question in plant ecology. Topics are bounded by the themes and ideas covered in course lecture material and the field of plant ecology. The instructor/TAs provide feedback on the question based on feasibility, scientific merit and potential for a two-page proposal. The question development is followed by two different rounds of peer review and eventually a final proposal is submitted for a grade.

Instructors can adapt this writing assignment to any field of science that writes research proposals similar to the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Proposal. It was built to be a course-long assignment with several checkpoints throughout the course to ensure student comprehension and development.